


Disposable

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Background Aziraphale/Crowley, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Crowley is responsible for the stories about Raphael due to shenanigans, Gen, POV Outsider, also some mild blasphemy if you're a Christian?, assumes that the cut scene in Heaven is canon, by which I mean multiple (nongraphic) discorporations, canon typical violence against Eric the Disposable Demon, given the fandom I feel like a little bit of blasphemy sort of comes with the territory, shenanigans are unfortunately not detailed in this fic, that's part of why I had to write this fic, the Disposable Demon's life is genuinely pretty awful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21994258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Eric Legion, Hell's punching bag, leads a horrible life.  And with the failure of Armageddon, it looks like it's never going to get any better.  Unless, of course, he can get any help from the one demon ever to beat the system.He has absolutely no idea what to make of the angel.
Comments: 141
Kudos: 418





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For those who are wondering, the Disposable Demon(s), played by Paul Adeyefa, is the demon with the hair which looks like bunny ears, who gets discorporated several times over the course of the series. I've seen some people in fandom call them Eric (which is the name Neil Gaiman gave them) and some people call them Legion (because we see three of them onscreen at once in one scene). I decided to go with both.
> 
> As the tags say, this fic assumes that the deleted scene in Heaven took place. It should be findable on Youtube if you haven't seen it.
> 
> For this fic, I am using a delightful headcanon that I found on tumblr, which says that although Crowley was not the Archangel Raphael before falling, he inadvertently invented the Archangel Raphael due to a mixture of getting caught doing good miracles, panicking, and using the back half of Aziraphale's name as an alias. This only comes up in a footnote, but I thought it could do with a little context.
> 
> I chose they/them pronouns for Eric because I don't think canon gives us any indication. Please let me know if I've slipped and referred to them as "he" at any point. I will correct it.

Eric Legion stared at the very humanlike dwelling and wondered if they were in the wrong place. The idea of being in the wrong place shouldn't have sent a whisper of relief through them. They wanted to do this. They needed to do this.

But really, this was _not_ the dwelling of a demon. It had pink flowers all over the wall. Some sort of vine. The flowers seemed to glow with vitality in the afternoon light.

Eric had met and been nastily killed by vine demons and thorn demons both, so they avoided the plants as they made their way to the door. Really this was probably a human dwelling.

Except, as they touched the door, there was a tingle of power. Wards.

Fuck. _Fuck._ Okay. They were doing this. They knocked on the door. Not loudly. Rather the opposite of loudly.

For a long moment, they thought they would be able to say, "Right, my mistake, then, nobody home," and flee. And it was ridiculous to _want_ that, because things wouldn't get any better unless that door opened—

The door opened.

And it wasn't the Traitor. Not the _right_ Traitor, anyway. It was the angel.

Eric took a step back.

As if to punctuate the moment, down in Hell another instance of Eric Legion was abruptly ripped into three pieces. All of their instances winced.

Eric remembered Heaven. It was, effectively, the first time they had seen Heaven, their former identity having been conclusively torn to pieces in the War. Piercingly bright light, as brilliant as noon in Israel, but just on the edge of cold rather than hot. The ranking angels standing in judgment, the one tied to the chair. _Can I hit him? I've always wanted to hit an angel._

Being afraid of angels because they were smitey and vengeful and everyone was more powerful than Eric Legion, that made sense. Being afraid of angels because they gave you a look—that was more inexplicable, more unsettling.

But right now, the angel's face was utterly different than it had been in Heaven. Instead of showing nothing, it showed everything. Surprise. Nervousness. Weighing Eric up. More surprise. Something else.

"Er, hello," the angel said. "I'd quite like to invite you in, but I'm afraid there are things I must insist on."

"Things?" Eric's voice came out more nervous than usual. Which was saying something, because Eric’s life was pretty much a series of awful things happening to their various iterations.

"I certainly won't harm you, deliberately and unprovoked, while you're under my roof today. I swear it on my name." Eric felt the oath take. The power was somehow rich and sweet, like cream. "But I will defend myself, my husband, and anyone or anything else who might need it. So. Take it or leave it, I'm afraid."

That oath. That oath had to mean pain, somehow. You didn’t swear not to harm someone unless you had come up with a really good way to harm them without breaking the oath. And there was the memory of the angel’s eyes, in Heaven. Absolutely unyielding. Like steel. "I—honestly, I should be going, I was actually looking for the Demon Crowley. And since this is the wrong house, I'll just—"

"Oh, no, you have the right house. Please, come in. Would you like some tea?”

Eric edged inside, past the wards—uncomfortably aware that they were now on the wrong side of someone else’s magic. “Tea?”

“Yes, haven’t you had it before? It’s mostly water, but with an infusion of certain aromatic leaves. More delicious than it sounds.”

“I know what tea is. I’ve been Earthside before.” Plenty of times, actually. Duke Hastur might pride himself on tempting bishops and politicians and other important personages, but he never selected a target on his own. He probably couldn’t, since he maintained a stubborn ignorance of human things like telephones and zebra crossings, and it was difficult to find a likely victim without occasionally crossing the road. “It’s just—why would you give me any?”

“I don’t see how I could possibly do otherwise,” the angel said. “Please, sit down. Won’t be a moment.”

That was how Eric found themself in an armchair.

A moment later, the angel was back in the room. “We haven’t been properly introduced,” he said. “I’m Aziraphale, former Principality, currently retired. You?”

“Um. Legion. Former—actually, Satan only knows. General dogsbody _now,_ though. Listen—is the Demon Crowley here?”

“At the moment,” the angel admitted, “he’s out for a walk. Haunting twitchers, I shouldn’t wonder.”

The words made sense on their own. Put together . . . “Haunting . . . twitchers?”

The Principality Aziraphale smiled, a very un-angelic smile. It was mischief-filled and small, as if he were hiding it from someone but wanted Eric to share in the joke. “Crowley,” Aziraphale explained, “likes to go for walks under the sea. And then he likes to find an isolated twitcher or angler and walk out of the water in front of them, completely dry and fully dressed in somewhat old-fashioned clothes, tipping his hat politely, and leaving them with the distinct impression that they just met a shipwrecked ghost.” The smile broadened. “He’s simply dreadful. What did you mean, when you said Satan only knows?”

“Someone cut me to pieces with a mind sword. In the War.” To this day, being torn or cut apart bothered Eric substantially more than other kinds of death. Not that they would admit it, or everyone would be doing it. The thing that got to them was, whoever had done it1 they must have _stopped_ and deliberately cut Eric to bits. Combat wounds didn’t leave you in thirteen parts.

The angel looked absolutely stricken.

“Figure I must have been someone impressive,” Eric went on. “Or my consciousness wouldn’t have survived, even—splintered, like I am. Maybe a cherub. Maybe even a seraph.” They sighed wistfully, imagining themself as someone powerful, a Duke of Hell, or even one of the Princes of the Dark Council.

“You don’t know?”

Eric shook their head. “I don’t remember being anything but a demon. Demons. Whichever.”

The angel still looked stricken, and was going to say something, but was interrupted by a piercing note from the other room. Eric jumped up, alarmed, looking around to see what was coming for them.

“It’s all right. It’s all right, it’s just the tea. I’ll go get it, shall I?” The angel retreated.

Eric settled gingerly back in the chair and looked around. There was a painting on the wall, and the lamp beside them was colorful stained glass—everywhere, it seemed, there was something beautiful.

Eric wondered what would happen if they smashed the lamp, or set the painting on fire.

They thought of the look the angel had given them in Heaven, and resolved not to try it.

Down in Hell, in Maintenance, a Baronet of Hell caught them across the face with a mop handle. “Lord Hastur says,” that instance of Eric said indistinctly, “he needs a maintenance crew—”

The second hit discorporated them.

Eric sighed. It was part of the nature of being Eric Legion that you could be having a bad day in one place and a . . . well, not a _good_ day somewhere else, but a not-being-hit one, and that was mostly what Eric aspired to. They really should relax and enjoy the moment of not being violently discorporated, so as to take it more philosophically when the angel actually did it.

The angel came back into the room with a silver tray full of _stuff._ Eric, who had lived in Israel and Africa and briefly in South America, had to have the angel walk them through the process of tea assembly. There was milk, and there was sugar, and then there was the actual tea itself.

More to find out what would happen than anything else, Eric dropped five sugar cubes into their tea. It didn’t fizz, which they had been idly hoping for. Eric had once spent a highly entertaining morning dropping various sweets into a bottle of soda and watching the ensuing mayhem. They looked at the tea and wondered how the angel would go about poisoning it without violating his oath.

Oh, well. “Bottoms up,” Eric said, and slammed back the liquid, and burned their tongue and throat, and accidentally discorporated themself.

§

The thing was, Eric reflected as they made their way _back_ up the lane to the cottage five minutes later, they weren’t stupid. Okay, perhaps they weren’t especially good at maths, and their favorite literature was their secret treasured edition of _1001 Knock-Knock Jokes,_ but they were actually fairly clever compared to, for instance, an extremely high-ranking demon whose name might or might not rhyme with Rastur. If Eric was going to be a punching bag for every cross arsehole in Hell—which they plainly _were—_ then there was no reason to wear bodies that were any stronger than wet tissue paper. How did you torture wet tissue paper? Exactly.

On occasion, it backfired.

The angel opened the door, looking distraught, almost before Eric put their knuckles on it. “My dear boy,” he said, “how in _Heaven_ did you manage a new body so quickly?”

“It’s not a new body,” Eric said, “it’s another one of me. And. Um. Not a boy. Exactly.”

“Of, of course not. My apologies. Please come in, I’m _dreadfully_ sorry, I had no idea—” He continued to apologize as they made their way to the room Eric had recently—vacated. “You don’t have to sit in the same chair, if it bothers you,” the angel babbled on. “What do you mean, another one of you?”

“I’m one person in—not just thirteen bodies. Thirteen instances. Thirteen _paying-attentions._ I mean, I can really, honestly do and think of thirteen things at once. Malapium calls me a hive-mind? Malapium’s aspect is a bee.”

“So this,” the angel motioned to them, “is a different—you?—than I was talking to a moment ago?”

Eric shrugged. “It doesn’t make a difference. They’re all me. I know everything I know. Feel everything I feel.”

“You must be an impressively powerful demon,” the angel said.

“I’m the weakest demon in Hell.”

“There must be a way to leverage your assets. I’ve never heard of such a thing among angels. Consciousness distributed across—thirteen parts, you said? That—is it—is it _painful,_ being that way? I realize it must have come about because of that dreadful situation with the mind sword, so I imagine you would probably knit together if you could, but—”

“I’m used to it,” Eric said. “It doesn’t hurt. And I don’t exactly remember existing differently, do I?”

What would it be like, to be in one place at a time? Would Eric trade their multiplicity for the power they must originally have had? Power was good, power was useful, but you needed more than mere power to make yourself a Prince or a Duke of Hell, didn’t you? You needed the viciousness and finesse to pull someone’s bones out, one by one, and keep them entirely alive and conscious through the process. Did Eric have that?

They’d never honestly had the chance to find out.

The way the angel was looking at them was—unsettling, in an entirely different and diametrically opposite way from the unyielding look that had unsettled Eric in Heaven. It was a look that said, when the angel had asked _is it painful,_ the answer to that question mattered more than all the cherubim in Heaven and Dukes in Hell.

Eric didn’t like being _focused_ on like that. They’d far rather have someone backhand them to another pointless discorporation than be Looked At. They almost wanted the steel back. Where was the steel?

Down in Hell, an instance of Eric slipped into another shoddy body. Stretched cautiously, assuring themself that tripping down the stairs would discorporate them three times over, and left the Incarnation department, miracling in their makeup kit and looking for a reflective surface. Leave it about thirty minutes, and then the next one of them would walk in. Eric didn’t like people to know how many of them were extant at any one moment.

The back door to the cottage opened and closed, and Eric tensed. Moment of truth. _Most likely,_ in five minutes there would be three of Eric lurking around in the vicinity of Incarnation wishing that demons without bodies could vape. But if it _didn’t_ happen that way—

Why were they almost more afraid of it not happening that way?

“It’s all right,” Aziraphale said quietly, and Eric looked at him in startlement.

The Great Traitor Crowley sauntered into the room and stopped dead.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said, for all the world as if Crowley being there was the most delightful thing he could think of. “Legion here has been waiting to speak with you. I was going to ask their business, but we got rather, er, there was an interruption of sorts, purely my fault I’m afraid—”

The Traitor clicked his fingers and the armchair grew straps. Straps that clamped down hard on Eric’s arms and legs, straps with runework across the leather.

 _“Crowley?”_ Aziraphale asked, shocked.

Eric couldn’t get away. They couldn’t get _away,_ and the spells were good enough that their incorporeal form might not be able to get away either, and as any demon knew, there were still things you could do to an incorporeal spirit. “Lord Crowley—” they said, shakily.

“Shut it.” The Traitor stalked forward. _“You_ brought the Hellfire up from Hell to murder _my_ _husband._ _You_ ‘always wanted to hit an angel.’” They produced a small knife and flipped it end over end, with the practiced air of someone who knew exactly how to use it.2 “You really shouldn’t have asked to do that.”

Eric shrank back against the chair. “Lord Crowley,” they said. “I, I, I, it was just, I didn’t mean—” Cut up. They _hated_ being cut up.

“You did mean it. You absolutely meant it. Too bad for you.”

 _“Crowley!_ I did not tell you about my extraordinary rendition so you could accumulate some sort of, of _revenge list!_ Leave the poor child _alone!”_

Remarkably, the Traitor stopped.

“They’re not a child,” he said. “They’re a demon.”

“They lost their identity during the War. A new entity, essentially. That makes them younger than us, at the very least. How much younger is an interesting question.”

“And some people think they were a seraph that got cut up, but most people think they were just a basic angel who got lucky somehow, I _know._ Everyone who’s had to work with Hastur knows about Eric Legion, bunny demon and general punching bag.”

 _“Hare_ demon,” Eric said unwisely. It was—it was important to them, all right? Bunnies were twee, hares were hyper-alert nutcases with a massive mystical tradition behind them. It made a difference.

The Traitor remembered their name. Their full name, not just Legion.

Nobody in Hell called them Eric. Ever. They had more or less stopped asking.

“Still a demon,” the Traitor said.

“Do I really have to point out the obvious, dear?”

“Still a demon who _wanted to hurt you.”_

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, “but they aren’t trying to hurt me just now, are they? Please, Crowley. Find out what they want, at the very least.”

It wasn’t the sort of plea that anyone in Hell would have responded to. Or, rather, they would have responded to it by hurting the pleader worse, because that’s what weakness was for. Pleas in general got you nowhere.

Which was what made it more bewildering when the Traitor Crowley threw himself backwards into the armchair opposite. “Talk quick. I’ve been wanting to practice knife-throwing for a while. Getting really rusty.”

“Lord Crowley,” Eric stuttered, “I would like to—I was hoping to—I would like to pledge myself to your service.”

 _“What?”_ the Traitor said incredulously.

§

Here was the plan. It was arguably not a very good one.

Eric had hated Hell for millenia. Well, that was natural enough, everyone hated Hell. They had looked forward to Armageddon simply for the promise that it would get them _out._ And Heaven was supposed to be even nicer than Earth, wasn’t it? Maybe once the forces of Hell had won, they would have been able to find a celestial broom closet, one with no leaks and a _lock_ on the door, and a pillow and a blanket and a light bulb and _1001 Knock-Knock Jokes—_

Forget that bit, that wasn’t important. The point was, they wanted out of Hell.

Of course, it wasn’t as if you could go _leaving._ That was impossible. Once a demon, always a demon; once unforgivable, always unforgivable. Satan never gave up what was his, and even if you were Earthside they would find ways to bruise you, to burn you.

Except that someone had _done_ it. Left Hell altogether. Left nothing behind but a glowing white towel, gibbering infernal royalty, and a legend.

Eric had tried to make the hope go away. It didn’t. It galled them.

Obviously, Lord Crowley was vastly more powerful than he had pretended and had played everyone, up to and including the Dark Council, for fools. He had probably been doing it for millennia. Some people were using phrases like _secret Archangel._ 3 That wasn’t something that someone like Eric Legion could duplicate.

On the other hand, Lord Crowley’s new station, as the—overlord of Earth? It didn’t matter, whatever title he chose would obviously be correct and fearsome—the point was, such a personage needed aides. And Eric had run every errand Hell could invent, at one time or another.

From his perspective, only being discorporated by _one_ person was considerably better than being discorporated by _every_ person, even if Lord Crowley’s punishments could be reasonably expected to be more devastating than anything thought up by Lord Hastur, who was, after all, his inferior now—and although Eric expected the organization would grow swiftly, there was something to be said for having seniority.

And besides—besides, there was just sheer _admiration,_ wasn’t there? And fear, of course, but there was no point in serving someone who didn’t scare the crap out of you . . .

§

“No,” the Traitor Crowley said. “Where do I even start? _No.”_

“I know I’m not the best Hell has to offer, Lord Crowley—”

 _“Stop_ calling me that. It’s Crowley. No titles, no honorifics more glorious than _Mister._ I spent six thousand years dodging Hell’s hierarchy, what makes you think I’d go create one the moment I get shut of them for good?”

“Uh . . .” Eric had honestly not thought of not _having_ a hierarchy. How would that even work?

“And just the idea of crowning myself _overlord of Earth—_ do I look _stupid_ to you?”

“Of course not! But—”

“This world belongs to the humans. If you brought the full force of Heaven or Hell against them, you could probably subjugate them—for a bit—but one demon and one angel? It would be suicide. I have something most demons don’t—it’s called creativity—but the humans have _a lot more of it._ There’s no way to go up against a world full of them, and that’s even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

“Humans are powerless, though,” Eric protested.

“Ever met a sorcerer? Or a witch?”

Eric had, on occasion, been summoned by a sorcerer. They shuddered slightly. “That’s—I mean, it’s not miracles, though. It’s symbols, and rituals, and, and, and—”

“Symbols which affect _us_ and have no effect on _them._ Humans can walk across a fully powered up pentagram as they please, break their sworn word whatever they swear it by—they _aren’t playing by the same rules._ And believe me, humans know how to use rules. No. There’s no conquest here. I have never been a conqueror, and anyway, I’m _retired.”_

“But—there has to be some way I can serve you.”

“Do you want to serve him,” the angel asked, “or do you want to get out of serving Hell? There’s a difference.”

Eric stuttered. The thing was, the answer was obvious. Of _course_ they wanted to get out of serving in Hell. But the Rules were, you expressed fervent desire to serve whoever you were supposed to be serving or that person (probably Lord Hastur) ripped your tongue out. “I—but—I—”

“Go back to Hell,” the Demon Crowley ordered. “There’s nothing for you here, and if I catch you sniffing around, I’ll make you regret it.” They gestured, and the straps disappeared.

Eric slumped. And waited. In Hell, one of their disincarnate instances looked both ways, then slipped into a broom closet. _One_ of them needed to let the misery out, after all, and most of them were working right now.

“What’re you waiting for?” the Demon Crowley snapped.

“For you to discorporate me, Lord—um—I mean—Mr. Crowley.” That form of address felt _bizarre._ Down in Hell, the disincarnate instance blessed at length and tried to bang their head against the wall, which didn’t work without a body.

“You have feet, they work, you can walk out the door and go back to Hell _yourself._ I’m not doing it for you.”

“You’re letting me _go?”_

“Yes, I am.”

“Without—I mean—”

“Do you want to wait and see if I change my mind?”

Eric stood up hastily. “No, sir! Sorry, sir! I’ll just be—” Going on. Back to Hell. With no hope of a reprieve.

The angel raised his hand. “Just a moment.”

Eric froze.

“As it happens,” the angel said, “I _could,_ if you wanted, put you in touch with some people who are working to defy Heaven and Hell both.”

“Angel?” Crowley said incredulously.

“They want a better life for themself. Their loyalty to Hell is nonexistent. And we did commit to lending a hand.”

“Lending a hand is one thing! This is connecting _our_ people with a—listen, you’re right, Eric has no loyalty to Hell. That’s because Eric has no loyalty to _anybody._ They can serve a person one moment, knife them the next, and slit a child’s throat right after that—whatever benefits them most.”

“Whatever keeps them from being hurt most, surely,” Aziraphale corrected mildly.

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes, I think there is. Crowley, I’m not going to be foolish about this. There would be pacts—”

“Anyone can slither out of a pact.”

“No, my dear. That takes creativity. Besides, it isn’t as if our friends are exactly incapable of defending themselves, is it? After _you_ helped teach them?”

Crowley made an inarticulate noise. “That group,” he said, “is supposed to be people who care about Earth! You’re not being subtle, Aziraphale, I _know_ what you’re trying to do!”

The angel looked directly at him, and there, maybe, there was a hint of the steel. “I know. That’s exactly why you’re going to let me do it.”

After a moment, astonishingly, Crowley looked away. “I’m not letting them ride in the Bentley. They’re filthy.”4

“I think,” Aziraphale said, “before we go anywhere, we should probably pick up some clothes down in the village. And then maybe back up here for a shower.”

* * *

1 The only angels issued mind swords in the War had been cherubim. Of the cherubim who remained loyal to Heaven, Sandalphon was probably the most . . . well, Gabriel called him a “go-getter.” Eric had felt a slight chill when he saw Sandalphon in Heaven, but he had put it down to the celestial air conditioning. [ return to text ]

2Crowley had spent some time in the criminal underground of London, but that didn’t make him a knife fighter. In fact, Crowley’s greatest asset in a knife fight was his ability to convince people that they didn’t want to be in a knife fight, and possibly would be better off working for him instead. However, he had once spent every evening for a solid three months practicing flipping a switchblade end over end and catching it again. It didn’t do a blessed thing to enhance his fighting ability or his various nefarious enterprises, but he had seen it in a movie and it looked _fucking cool,_ so there. [ return to text ]

3Well, he had _masqueraded_ as an Archangel before. But that was another story. The truth was, Crowley was indeed more powerful than average, but it had nothing to do with rank and everything to do with soaking up human stories until he had built an even more formidable imagination than he’d had as a stellartifex. For all that he liked to claim he didn’t read—and it was true that he would rather have a book on tape if he couldn’t convince Aziraphale to read to him—he _loved_ a good yarn. [ return to text ]

4 The showers in Hell hovered just above hypothermia temperatures on the rare occasions that they worked and dispensed liquids that weren’t toxic or acidic. Even so, Eric would have used them—but there was a certain danger in appearing more clean and well put together than one’s superior. And Eric worked for Hastur. [ return to text ]


	2. Chapter 2

It was, as it turned out, a whole day until they could go meet these mysterious rebels that Aziraphale thought so highly of. Eric spent the time feeling off-balance and unnerved. They accidentally discorporated themselves in the shower1 and had to make their way back to the cottage again, and it felt almost _reassuring._

And then there was the matter of the clothes. Eric didn’t actually want new clothes. Eric wanted clothes that nobody, under any circumstances, would want to steal from them. Eric wanted clothes that looked exactly like everyone else’s clothes in Hell, only slightly rattier. Eric wanted clothes that were black.

Which meant that Eric was surprised to find themself coveting, and then selecting in the shop, a pink T-shirt with a bone on it that said _I Found This Humerus._ Aziraphale sighed when he saw it. Which seemed to amuse Crowley.

At last, next morning, they set out. Eric trying not to touch the car’s upholstery, because the threats about what would happen if they damaged it would have made the Tortures department sit up straight and take notes. Or, no, maybe they wouldn’t—it wasn’t that Crowley actually _described_ what he was going to do, more that he dropped a lot of pieces that could add up to deep unpleasantness and let you put together the puzzle yourself. 

Their destination was a university. Eric wasn’t sure why Hellish malcontents would meet in a university. Aziraphale and Crowley led the way and Eric followed, puzzling at everything. Not least of which the connection between Crowley and Aziraphale.

For the life of him, Eric couldn't figure out who was in _charge._

You heard stories about the Serpent of Eden. Contradictory ones. Some people claimed he was just some dumb arsehole who lucked out on his first assignment and stumbled into a few modest successes, deciding along the way that he was better than the average low-rank torture-bait, putting on airs, wouldn't it be nice if someone kicked his face in. Some people thought he was exactly the opposite, a sinister manipulator whose voice alone could beguile stronger demons, terrifying and powerful and striking where you least expected him. Few people were passing around the first story anymore.

But if he _was_ that formidable a demon, why did he do what the angel asked him to?

And if he was somehow the _angel’s_ pet—that wasn’t even possible, angels didn’t subjugate, they just smited—smote? Smit? If he was somehow the angel’s pet, then why would the angel listen to everything he said?

None of it made any sense.

Eric followed the two into one of the buildings, an old building with old brickwork, and up a flight of stairs, and into—a classroom? Eric had never been in a classroom before, but there were desks, currently pushed up against the walls. Sunlight came in tall windows. Five or six humans turned to look at them.

“Eric,” Aziraphale said, “this is Dr. Anathema Device, a professor of medieval studies and, informally, arcane defense; and her students. Anathema, Mx. Eric Legion. Pronouns are ‘they/them.’ Anathema and her students are currently compiling a defensive manual for Earth, although of course it won’t be published under exactly . . .”

Eric lost track of what Aziraphale was saying. Every human in this room was a sorcerer.

They could feel spells and power overlapping. Most prominently the Anathema human, with a clear, sharp feel to her power, but the others had their individual tones. Some of them were wearing spells. Eric could feel the runes.

They spun, staring at the angel. This, oh, this had been expertly done. Lure them into a den of sorcerers. Any moment now, their spells and symbols would close around them.

 _Always wanted to hit an angel._ Eric really shouldn’t have asked to do that.

Now the angel was going to have his revenge. And if the sorcerers could bind Eric, they could bind _all_ of Eric, pull up instance after instance of them for whatever they wanted, whether it was sorcerous materials or their eternal servitude—

Eric had only one escape route.

They took it. Conjured fire onto themselves and crumpled onto the floor. It hurt.

It wouldn’t hurt for long.

Except, as Eric let themself sink down towards Hell, they heard an implacable voice say, _“No. I won’t allow it.”_

§

Eric was in a lot of places at once, of course. But their instances found a way to duck out of whatever they were doing right at that moment, because something _bizarre_ was going on with the Earthside instance, and they needed to concentrate.

They were still there. That was the first bizarre thing.

They felt—different. There was a steady, reassuring thudding somewhere inside them, for a start, but beyond that, the body felt, the body felt—

Eric pushed themself off the floor, and wiggled their fingers as if they had a new body, just to see how it worked, and realized: they were wearing a _tank._ It wasn’t shaped any different, but this was the most sturdy body they had ever had. Glowing with health, vivid with strength, not just knit back together but knit back together _much better._ They felt like they could take a hit from a bus.

They twisted around to stare at Aziraphale, who was kneeling beside them.

“Even if you consider yourself disposable,” Aziraphale said, “I refuse to do so.”

_“How?”_

“How what?”

“You can’t—I’m a _demon,_ you’re an _angel._ You can’t _heal—_ it would burn me to a crisp!”

“You surely don’t think this is the first time I’ve healed a demon, do you? Usually after the demon does something I’m not meant to refer to as ‘gallant.’” Crowley made a noise of protest. “You’ve been told quite a number of things about celestial and infernal energies. Only some of them are true.”

Eric had a heart now and it was beating fast in their chest. They scrambled to their feet, and Aziraphale got up as well, dusting his knees even though there was no dust.

“Now, perhaps you’d care to tell me why you did that?”

“To escape you,” Eric said hopelessly. And they were hardly going to escape _now,_ were they. This body— _this body._ You could cut bit after bit after bit, and it would survive. It was the ideal torture vessel.

“And why would you think that necessary?” The angel was managing a peculiar mix of stern and—something else. Something softer.

“Because you’ve brought me into a den of _sorcerers!”_

“Witches,” the Anathema human objected.

Eric ignored her. “I mean, I _get_ it. It makes sense. Serve me up, let them disassemble me for spell components or whatever, they have more power, which means that they’re more use to you. You’d probably get more out of me this way than you would from me as an aide. It just—it just makes sense. I should have seen it coming.”

The angel looked upset. _“Nothing_ like that is going to happen.”

“We won’t hurt you,” the Anathema human confirmed.

“You’re humans. You can’t swear to it. Not and have it really take hold.”

“I can swear to stop them if they try,” Aziraphale said quietly.

Eric stared at him.

“I’m quite serious. If any of the humans in this room deliberately try to harm you without provocation, and I am aware and able to prevent it, I will. I swear it on my name.”

It caught fast and held. Sweet and rich.

“Why would you—” They couldn’t talk right. “‘Always wanted to hit an angel.’ I meant it. I did.”

“I know.”

“Then _why_ wouldn’t you butcher me when you have the chance?”

“Because,” Aziraphale said, “I forgive you.”

There was a roaring in Eric’s ears. The angel’s eyes were too blue, too much. Too _looking into them._ _“You can’t do that.”_

“Oh? And who, pray tell, is going to stop me?”

The steely look up in Heaven, Eric suddenly understood, had been nothing but a mask. A warning, perhaps, but a warning of nothing Eric could have anticipated. The angel’s true, devastating power was not threats. Not force. It was the ability to look Eric in the eyes and break them utterly into pieces, with this, this—

Gentleness.

It was gentleness.

Eric fled.

Pushed in a door at random, and lunged into the green and white tiled room beyond, and curled up under the toilet, and cried.

All the other instances of Eric were crying too.

§

Eric wasn’t sure how long it took. Long enough to calm down a bit. Long enough to use some of their scanty, precious miracle power to send their makeup kit up to Earth. They went to the sink and looked at themself in the mirror just as the door opened.

Ugh. Well, that was a side effect of wearing mascara, Eric supposed. You ended up looking like a tanuki demon rather than a hare one. They wetted a paper towel and started to dab their eyes.

“It takes everyone differently,” Crowley said quietly, from near the doorway.

Eric looked around quickly. _Now_ they knew some of what had been bothering them about Crowley. Any other demon would have blocked the door, making sure Eric had nowhere to run. There was a pattern of—despite the earlier threats, there was a pattern of _not hurting Eric,_ and Eric didn’t know how to cope.

“Did he—” Eric swallowed. “Did he—forgive—you?”

“Yes.”

“How do you—” Words failed Eric.

“How do you cope with kindness that feels like it could tear you apart?”

Eric nodded shakily.

“I have an advantage, there. I remember something other than Hell. And he went easy on me at first. _I forgive you,_ that’s the strong stuff. He really shouldn’t have laid that one on you before you had a chance to acclimatize.”

Remembering something other than Hell. Eric had wondered, now and again, if they were better off than the older demons in not remembering Before. The various chants, the recitations— _we are the Fallen, we will never be forgiven, all that we want, we must take by force—_ there was a bitter anguish to those words. Some demons said, softly and privately, that they could _feel_ their Fallenness. Eric, of course, felt the same as they always had.

Except now.

It hurt. It was _frightening._ Being treated like that, given assurances of safety that you’d never groveled for, having _absolutely impossible forgiveness_ dispensed upon you as if you inherently _mattered_ somehow. It threw Eric completely off-balance. They hated it.

They wanted more of it.

“It’s mad,” Eric admitted. “I’m standing here, seriously thinking about slapping someone across the face so that he’ll _forgive_ me again, knowing perfectly well that it’ll make me cry.”

“Try it and I’ll end you,” Crowley hissed, slinking closer. Exactly how he managed to hiss, or to sound that _snaky_ using a sentence with no S’s in it, was not something that Eric felt like examining.

“I didn’t say I was _going_ to! It’s just—is it addictive? Did he use some sort of angel magic on me, and I’m never going to be able to break free? I came up here planning to serve _you._ Not _him.”_

“He doesn’t want your service,” Crowley said. “He doesn’t want to tame you. He doesn’t want an underling.”

“Then _what does he want?”_ Eric thought they knew the answer. It burned inside them.

“He wants to help you. For no reason beyond kindness.”

Eric shuddered, a full body quake that didn’t feel exactly like horror or fear, although there was definitely some fear in there. “I don’t know what to do.”

“First,” Crowley said, “you can talk with the humans. You wanted to join a new side, something that isn’t Heaven and isn’t Hell? I’m not in charge of it, and Aziraphale isn’t in charge. _They_ are.”

§

“So the idea,” the human said, “is to avoid a war.”

Her name was Crimson, which she attributed to a “goth phase”2 at a point when she was picking a new name. Then there was Jonathan, and Stella, and Fiona. They had taken Eric back to Crimson’s student flat and they had made a snack of the available materials, which turned out to be popcorn and apple slices. And nobody had tried to kill Eric, and nobody had tried to control Eric, and it was, it was . . .

It put Eric off-balance. But they were starting to not hate this particular kind of off-balance.

“The War didn’t happen,” Eric said, confused. “The two Traitors—I suppose I shouldn’t say that—Aziraphale and Crowley did something to the Antichrist, and stopped it.” They sighed. “I wanted a place in Heaven. I thought it would be so wonderful. But then I had to go up there for the execution, and it . . . really wasn’t all that. Just very bright, and I don’t know if they had broom closets at all.”

“Broom closets?” Jonathan said.

Eric explained their fantasy of having a closet all their own with pillows and soft things and _1001 Knock-Knock Jokes._ “I’d have an instance there all the time, if I had a place like that.”

Then, of course, they had to explain about having multiple instances. “I’m talking with you, but I’m also filling out a requisition form, and standing on a ladder trying to patch a leak, and holding the ladder, and—bugger. Being killed by Lord Hastur.” The humans’ faces registered horror. “It’s all right,” Eric assured them, not sure _why_ they were reassuring them. “It was instantaneous. I just go down to Incarnations and get another one. Now, if he tried that teleporting-the-bones-out trick on _this_ body, after Aziraphale rebuilt it, Satan only knows how long it would hang on. I think I’d better keep this instance topside. It’s not as if anyone is going to bother to count how many of me are running around.”

“So you really are _Legion._ I mean, it’s descriptive,” Stella said. “Are you the Legion in the Bible?”

“Don’t know. Never read it. Probably? I don’t know of any other Legions.”

“Well, were you ever exorcised into a herd of pigs?”

Eric groaned and stuffed popcorn into their mouth. “I don’t want to talk about it. Do you know how _wrong_ it feels, getting stuck in a body that doesn’t match your animal aspect? I think the weirdo exorcist hobo expected me to just stick around in the pigs until he could do a better job of it, but I’ve got my own ways of getting out of things, thanks. And there was this tall sea cliff right over there, and for about three seconds, pigs _did_ fly. Downward.” He swallowed the last of the popcorn. “That was two thousand years ago, or close enough. People are keeping track of my screw-ups going back that far?”

“The weirdo exorcist hobo turned out to be someone a bit important,” Stella said, sounding somewhat funny.

“Huh.” Eric thought about that. “Didn’t look it. You know, I’ve never really tried popcorn before? I mean—I’ve _been_ on Earth. Even spent time here. But I’m always doing some sort of work . . .” They were _comfortable_ talking with these people. How had that happened? “I _have_ stolen ripe avocados, though, straight off the tree. Didn’t much like the skin, but the insides were nice.”

“So, basically, you like the Earth,” Jonathan said.

“Oh, yeah. Better than Hell by miles.”

“The thing is, your higher-ups think of Earth as a resource. Sooner or later, they’re going to interfere in a way that touches something off. And whether we win or lose, a demonic or angelic army could pretty much pulverize the planet.”

“Yeah,” Eric admitted, “probably. I’m the weakest demon in Hell, and I could still kill any of you if you didn’t have wards up.” They all gave them funny looks. “Not that I would _want_ to. You aren’t hurting me, that’s enough like an alliance for me to be getting on with. But the point is, what I could do to a single person, Lord Beelzebub could do to London.”

“Right,” Crimson said. “So we’ve got to change the playing field somehow. The first way we’ve thought of is to make sure humans know witchcraft and tricks and protections. That’s the angle our teacher, Anathema, is working on. But the _second_ thing is to make an alliance with various demons and angels.”

Eric thought about it.

It wasn’t like their first plan. The notion of serving under the great and terrible Serpent, the demon who frightened all of Hell.

But if it _had_ turned out like that—if Mr. Crowley had matched Eric’s ideas of great and terrible—Eric would have just traded one fear for another.

Eric didn’t normally have much more ambition beyond that. Get discorporated quickly rather than slowly, serve someone slightly less temperamental than Hastur. But as life goals, these things . . . lacked scope.

If they allied with the humans, however . . .

Well, for a start, the humans didn’t seem inclined to discorporate them any time soon. And there was popcorn.

And—it was almost as if the humans had sparks of that devastating power that Aziraphale had unleashed on them. Not the healing, that was just miracle-work, but the earth-shaking, shattering power of _being nice to._ Would one of these humans someday say _I forgive you_ to Eric? Surely not. Surely that was impossible. Surely that was some special ability that Aziraphale had. Something unprecedented, like his ability to survive Hellfire.

Maybe with the humans, it would be small things. Things Eric could take without falling to pieces. _Do you want popcorn. How about some tea. I also have lemonade._

That would be . . . nice, sort of.

“I’ve got conditions,” Eric said.

“Thought you might,” Crimson said. “What conditions?”

“For starters, there was another book, back when I stole mine. It was called _1001 Dad Jokes,_ and I want it. And I want a way to get popcorn whenever I like. And . . .”

* * *

1They just hadn’t expected it to be _warm,_ all right? It made them jump, which made them slip, and that was that. [ return to text ]

2 Crimson’s life was more or less comprised of overlapping goth phases. She currently had red and black streaked hair and a vaguely steampunk dress. The inverted cross necklace had been omitted because Crowley was deeply embarrassed by anything to do with Satanism, but it had been a near thing. [ return to text ]


End file.
